Many computing devices include graphics interfaces that enable applications to perform drawing operations, such as for displaying and/or printing content. Graphics interfaces can include a layout engine, a rendering component, a graphics library, or other graphics utility (e.g., a graphics-based application-programming interface (API)) that provides access to a computing device's graphics functionalities.
To enable an application to perform a drawing operation on a computing device, a graphics interface can receive drawing operation attributes (e.g., content and formatting information) from the application and convert the drawing operation attributes into a form that can be used by the computing device's graphics functionalities. The graphics interface can then provide the converted drawing operation attributes to the graphics functionalities of the computing device, e.g., a video card, an embedded graphics processing unit (GPU), a printer, a printer driver, and so on. The graphics functionalities can then use the converted drawing operation attributes to output graphics, such as on a display screen of the computing device.
Sometimes a computing device that is associated with a particular graphics interface can be reconfigured to include a different graphics interface, such as an updated graphics interface. While an updated graphics interface may provide acceptable performance in most situations, sometimes an application or other utility will request access to a previous graphics interface as part of a request to perform a drawing operation.